The Man Who Heard Voices

by Michael Bamberger

  “Hey, Paul, did you know Valerie Bertinelli was doing summer stock in Bucks County?”

  “Really? No. No, I didn’t. That’s so strange. Valerie Bertinelli. Wow. No, I didn’t know that.”

  Jeffrey Wright—who would be playing Mr. Drury, father of the boy genius, Joey—had been in Syriana; he and his wife had recently had a baby, and he called from the road to say he was running late. After he heard the news, Night’s stress worsened measurably, for the read-through and beyond. Night’s newest worry had nothing to do with Jeffrey Wright as an actor. Night thought he was brilliant and masculine in the best sense of the word. His portrayal of the artist in Basquiat, gay and black and addicted to drugs, was devastating, as was his work in Angels in America. What worried Night was that Wright was an actor who needed time to figure out a role, and his availability would be limited during the rehearsal period. But you never would have known anything about Night’s anxiety if you’d seen him from a distance on the morning of the read-through. As he talked to one of the Perez de la Torre sisters, Marylin Torres, about her role in Maid in Manhattan, he was the picture of ease. His smile was not only pleasant, it was beatific.

  Maddie, Night’s new assistant, now a Bryn Mawr graduate and working her first big gig for her new boss, shepherded the actors to their assigned places at long catering tables that formed an enormous square. Bryce and Paul sat together. The smokers sat together. The Perez de la Torre sisters sat together. June and Cindy, mother and daughter, sat together. Night was ready to start, but one seat remained open.

  Stalling for time, Night said, “We’re waiting for one actor. I don’t want to say who it is—Jeffrey Wright—but in the meantime I’ll do a little stand-up.”

  People laughed, and when they stopped, Night seized the chance to make an important Lady announcement, one he knew would sound even more dramatic in the dying laughter. (It’s taxing, being so hyperaware.) “I have a new ending that will replace the old ending, so the last page you all have in your script, we won’t be using that.”

  Upon hearing Night’s announcement—it wasn’t news to Paul, the director’s designated insider—the movie’s lead instantly ripped the last page from his script in one decisive stroke, crumpled it up, threw it at Night, and shouted, “Extraneous!” More laughter.

  Night continued, “The idea for Lady in the Water came to me the same time as The Village.” He was standing, and everybody was looking at him. Nobody was sipping anything or checking for text messages. “I had two stories I wanted to tell. One was about struggle. The other about loveliness. I had to write the one about struggle first. The Village is a movie about hiding. And Lady in the Water was hard to write after that. To write it, I had to feel vulnerable again. And it was tough, tough to get rid of the cynicism, tough to get rid of all the things we do to protect ourselves.”

  He was speaking quickly, with great emotion and energy, even more than usual. You could tell the ideas had been in his head for a while, waiting for the right moment to come out.

  “I wanted to write a straight love story, but this script didn’t want to be that. It wanted to be something else. It turned into a father-daughter story. It wanted to answer the question, What do we see when we see a narf? Who does each of you see when you think of an angel?”

  A lean young actor named John Boyd, one of the smokers, immediately thought of the woman in the Bob Dylan song “Shelter from the Storm,” the one in the song’s enduring refrain: “‘Come in,’ she said, ‘I’ll give you shelter from the storm.’”

  Night was using narf like an everyday word, which for him it was. He might have used angel in the script, except the word came with such grand expectations of wings and harps. So he had invented a word with no expectations, and he had invented a nemesis for the narf, the scrunt. Paul had a bit about taming scrunts in a production called The Scrunt Whisperer. But if the movie worked, the scrunt would be terrifying.

  The coexistence of good and evil—the theme of Unbreakable—Night could have made movies about that for the rest of his career. Night viewed The Exorcist, Satan taking up residence in an innocent girl, as more than a horror movie with a famous vomiting scene. He saw the film as a metaphor for life, his own or anyone else’s. He fought the impulse to do or say or think some selfish thing, and tried to do something good or kind or inspiring. There were times when he failed. But it would have been easy for Night to lead a wholly narcissistic life. Instead, he kept regular office hours; worked hard but could also get away from work; set up treasure hunts for his girls on their birthdays; read Bhavna’s doctoral thesis for content and typos; gave scholarships to the needy; treated his employees well; tipped generously at Christmastime. And he did it all with a distinct sense of fun. He wasn’t going through the motions. It was exceptional, really. In my experience, watching elite athletes and others with off-the-chart drive, there’s a certain obvious ruthlessness. To stay on top, you need it. Night’s was beneath the surface.

  The person talking to the actors on the morning of the read-through was the same person from that balmy evening at the Burches’, when Night was so drunk with energy that he made everyone else there feel more alive. On the morning of the read-through, he was even more of a force, for he had endured a psychic blow since that balmy evening and survived it. He thought parents seeking perfect childhoods for their kids were deluded. He felt that childhood bumps made for stronger adulthoods. His childhood as Manoj, the outsider trying to find a way in, allowed him to write and direct as he did. (It particularly helped in writing Lady.) While Night talked to the actors, Noah, the boy playing Joey, sat on his real mother’s lap staring at Night.

  Jeffrey Wright, Noah’s movie father, slipped in, cool and handsome and whispering apologies, and the read-through began. A man with a booming theatrical voice started to read: “Interior. Apartment kitchen. Morning. A group of Hispanic women are screaming. One is holding a broom. One is holding a spray can. One is holding a stainless steel meat cleaver. The last two are just screaming.”

  The group of Hispanic women, the five Perez de la Torre sisters, were all staying at a second-tier Philadelphia hotel, a Residence Inn, getting in character by speaking in Spanish and eating together at Mexican restaurants. They were all such lovely people, they might have been real-life narfs. In the days before the read-through, with nothing to do except work on their screaming, they did their work in parks and bathrooms. When they started screaming in the first scene, everybody became hysterical with laughter. That is, almost everybody. Robinov, the Warner Bros. executive, sat impassively. His face revealed nothing.

  A tiny man, George Bass, playing the father of the sisters, read the first line of the script: “My daughter says she is very sorry for their scream. They are scared.”

  All through the read-through, the actors stared at their scripts. They took it all in with their ears but not their eyes. Except for Paul Giamatti. He had by far the biggest role, but he was already off script. Paul looked at George, who was across the room from him, fifty feet away, and delivered his first line: “T-tttell her not to be scared.”

  The room was arctic. You had no sense that outside, in the real world, it was a hot August day. Two of the Perez de la Torre sisters wore sensible cardigan sweaters. Jeff Robinov went into a steady, rhythmic shake, as if he were davening, or maybe he was just trying to keep warm. Everybody was focused. No cell phones went off. In rehearsals, Paul had joked about how the seat bottoms in multiplexes everywhere would start flapping the moment people heard Cleveland’s stutter, but his t-tttell was endearing, just as Night had hoped.

  There were no hovering hotel staff members or photographers or real-world intrusions of any sort. Night’s eyes were darting constantly, working the room, going from the script to the actors to Robinov. He watched as Robinov made a hundred-foot walk to get something hot to drink. Night was mouthing every word being said. Often he was grinning maniacally. Sometimes he looked shocked, even though he knew every word and every stutter of the script.

&nb
sp; Something fantastic was happening. For much of it, people were laughing, more than Night had thought they would. And then, near the end, there was a sudden, dramatic shift in mood, as there had been in the audition room with Cindy Cheung, when Night apologized for taking her from the comedy to the life-and-death part of the script.

  Night read his own lines, the Vick part, very simply, as himself. Paul did not. With his body trembling and his lips quivering and his left hand on his broad forehead and his sandals off and his feet shaking, he delivered his lines with such power and conviction, you would have thought cameras were rolling. (There were no cameras at the read-through, and no Chris Doyle, either.) Paul’s understanding of the script was profound.

  The read-through came to an end after two and a half intense hours. There was applause and some whooping. Paul was about to make an abrupt exit.

  “Wait, wait, wait, before you go pee,” Night said.

  “I’ve had to go since, like, page eighty-seven,” Paul said.

  “Just one thing.”

  Paul sat back down.

  “The greatest thing about having made the movies I’ve made, with the success they’ve had, it’s not…” Night didn’t complete the thought, but you knew where it was going: It’s not the private planes, the dinners out, the public adulation. He went on, “It’s not any of the things you might think it is. The greatest thing is having the chance to write a movie like this and have it made by people who will let me cast whoever I want, and to get actors like all of you to play these parts and make it come alive. So, thank you. Now, Paul—go to the bathroom.”

  There was a magnificent spread for lunch, heaping bowls of delicious food, grilled vegetables and sliced fresh fruit and chicken with perfect grill lines. Night barely ate. He moved from table to table like a football coach at a pregame meal, listening and talking, giving pep talks and taking temperatures. One of the smokers said to him, “If the movie is half as good as this read-through thing, it’s gonna kick ass.” The Perez de la Torre sisters all hugged Night one by one. The room was filled with jazz and classical pieces played by young Noah on a grand piano with his mother looking on. One person after another congratulated Night. He had been fighting a headache and an upset stomach all morning, but now he was content. Not all the actors had found their voices, but that was to be expected. It was still early. The main thing was that the script worked. Night could feel it. Jeff Robinov said some brief thing to Night, and Night smiled and patted him on the back.

  After lunch, the workday was over for most of the actors, but Night had hours to go. He understood on the most primitive level that from that morning forward, there was a finite number of hours available to him to get the movie—this most personal of all his movies—as good as it could possibly be. He operated on the idea that the more time you spent on something, the harder you worked at it, the better it would be. Straight out of the Jordan playbook. He went to a suite in the hotel, and for the next five hours he directed rehearsals. His editor, Barbara Tulliver, was with him the whole time. So was Paul, now Night’s trusted collaborator.

  Other actors came and went at appointed times. Mary Beth Hurt came in, raised her script, and said, “I usually dog-ear these things. For this one I felt reverence.” Maybe things were changing with her. At the read-through, she had read her lines as Night had written them. But Night had unfortunate news for Mary Beth: The script was too long, and he would be cutting some of her lines. She rubbed her bare summertime ankle in the vicinity of a tiny tattoo and said nothing. Paul started whistling as if he were hearing none of it. June and Cindy came in and worked on one of their Korean scenes. Sarita came in, flirty and confident, nothing like she had been on her audition day. Night called it her “awakening.” He had notes for every actor in the cast, some more than others, a few of them written, all of them in his head. He had a perfect acoustic memory of how the line had been delivered in the read-through and what worked about it and what did not. He sat on the floor, looking up at his actors like a kindergartener staring at the teacher. His stamina was astounding.

  Night gave Paul two notes. He had more, but he kept them to himself. He didn’t want to overwhelm his lead. He was already worried about over-rehearsing him. Night said, “Sometimes I don’t mind the word you decide to stutter on, but narf is a loaded word.”

  “Okay, fine,” Paul said.

  “So now this narf has come into your life, this angel they’ve sent down, and, just your luck, it’s the worst one they’ve got.”

  Paul looked worn out. His eyes had spidery red lines across them. But he had taken it upon himself to keep Night laughing. He understood the immense pressure Night was under, and Paul was going to do what he could to keep him sane. He had worked for insane directors, and it was not pleasant.

  Paul put on his professional voice-over voice and said: “Tonight on CBS: Touched by a Crappy Angel!”

  At last there were no more actors around for Night to rehearse, and only the director and his editor remained. Night tried out something on Barbara, an idea for the closing credits, pictures of pools from all over the world, pools with nobody in them: Japanese pools, suburban American backyard pools, hotel pools, Olympic pools. Barbara, reserved by nature, did not start jumping up and down. She had edited Signs but hadn’t been asked to edit The Village. She never knew why, and she had never asked. She was taking small steps back in.

  Night’s days were crowded, and everybody was trying to catch his eye. It wasn’t easy to get his undivided attention. At the end of the read-through day, with the first day of shooting still two weeks away, Barbara saw a chance to say something about the script that was bothering her. A flaw in the script’s logic, she felt. She knew from her work on Signs that you had to pick your spots carefully when you wanted to challenge Night. But she didn’t want to have regrets later. If Night agreed with her, he could still do something about it. Her issue involved the scrunt’s penchant for violence, when it pulled back and when it went all out.

  Night was immediately defensive. “Are you giving me script notes? Because the writer’s gone.” He sounded like he had in Los Angeles, when he first shed his writer’s skin and slipped into his aggressive director’s outfit.

  Barbara tried to persist, but she got nowhere.

  Night said, “After twelve drafts, it should be air-fucking-tight.”

  He suddenly felt lonely and weary. The day had gone well, and he was looking forward to a cast dinner that evening, a chance to relax, hang out with the actors. There was nothing wrong with Barbara’s question, but it made him feel like he had no one to turn to. All through the read-through, and all through the rehearsals afterward, he had been in a reverie. And now he was not. It made him feel that his script was failing, and that he was failing. The proof was right there: Barbara had found a hole when the script was supposed to be air-tight. It would never be right.

  He said some appropriate conciliatory thing to Barbara—he’d think about it—and they started to head out. Script problems were back in his head. Then, as if he were in a movie, he got off the hotel elevator on the wrong floor and made a wrong turn and was heading to the hotel restaurant, Lacroix, scene of the Disney breakup dinner, as if on autopilot. He was almost at the maitre d’s stand when he realized his error. Night hadn’t thought of Disney all day, and suddenly the head shots—Nina and Co.—were taunting him again.

  On the drive back to his house I asked Night what Robinov had said to him.

  “Two words,” Night said. There was frustration in his tone. “‘Good job.’ That’s it. Just ‘Good job.’ I thought there was magic in that room, I thought we had just done something brilliant. When somebody gets up to get coffee right in the middle of a read-through, that’s not a good sign. I didn’t reach him. ‘Good job.’ What does that mean?” He felt just as he had with Barbara—he had failed.

  His daughters were eating dessert when he got home, and he sat down with them. He could shift gears that way, even if it was a performance. Then he and Bhavna dro
ve back into Philadelphia for dinner with the cast at a Cuban restaurant. Breakfast, lunch, and now dinner with the little United Nations of an acting troupe he had assembled, on the only day they would all be together.

  At the end of a crowded day, Night went to bed thinking about Robinov’s Good job. The voices were fighting.

  Maybe he really doesn’t like it—maybe that’s why he kicked up the project to Alan Horn.

  Maybe this, maybe that. Stop being a girly man, would you? He’s just telling you that it’s too early to get too confident.

  Maybe there wasn’t magic in the room—the one guy not hired by me says, “Good job.”

  Listen: Sometimes “good job” is just “good job.”

  Maybe Nina was right.

  If she was, you’ll find out soon enough. Just make your damn movie. Do the work and shut up.

  Night and Paul had different ideas about fame. To Night, fame was a way to sell his movies. Paul didn’t want people to know him, only the characters he played. He knew about the costs of fame.

  In the New Haven of his boyhood, Paul’s father was famous. A. Bartlett Giamatti was named the president of Yale when Paul was ten. Bart looked like an Italian movie star, a big man with dark skin and thick hair and sunglasses. In the 1980s, Bart took on the Rev. Jerry Falwell and the educational policies of Ronald Reagan. He became a hero in a J. Press suit, at least to certain PBS viewers. Bart’s term as baseball commissioner was only six months, from the start of the 1989 season, and the whole time he was burdened with the question of whether Pete Rose had bet on his team, the Cincinnati Reds. Fifteen years after Bart’s death, it bothered Paul that his father was remembered mostly for Rose. To Paul, that was only a chapter.